


Tempt a Demon, Pay the Price

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Series: Phone Destroyer Shenanigans [1]
Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Crack, Demons, Fantasy, Gay, Hell, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Not Really But It's Mentioned, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, South Park: Phone Destroyer AU, The Other Characters Barely Matter, This is Shameless Creek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 00:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11263995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Craig Tucker was not religious in any sense of the term, but money was money, and Eric Cartman was convincing. Becoming a cheesy sideshow of a falsified church was not his idea of a good time, but a wild encounter he’d never have expected might turn that around.Rated T for swearing and vague sexual comments. Imp Tweek x Youth Pastor Craig. Thank you, Phone Destroyer.





	Tempt a Demon, Pay the Price

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys so this is definitely a thing that exists. The imp Tweek x youth pastor Craig stuff has been giving me actual life lately and I just had to contribute. Hope you enjoy!

Performing fake exorcisms and reading off the same script twice a week in a rotation of four major themes was not how Craig expected his adolescence to go. Surely, he thought, there would be one or two summer flings which would end in melodramatic heartbreak, and a few obsessions to cycle through in ridiculous phases he’d insist were not phases. Yet here he was, stuck in the sweltering heat of a church’s atrium, fanning himself with a promotional pamphlet and doodling in his notebook that was supposed to be filled with notes. It wasn’t; it was filled with more doodles.

“And Butters, I want to hear those bells next time, got it? The bells are important. Everyone loves the bells!”

“U-uh, yes Eric, sir,” Butters stuttered, and Craig huffed as he rolled his eyes. He could have been getting drunk at Clyde’s right now. He could have been stuffed in a closet with someone hot right now. He could have been losing his virginity right now. Those were fantasies, though, and right now, Craig liked money, and he liked cheating people out of said money. Cartman’s undeniably for-profit church fit that bill, and so here he stayed, seventeen and devoted to a God he did not believe in.

Truthfully, Craig had never set foot in a church in his life when Cartman made the initial offer. _‘We’ll be making_ bank, _Craig!’_ Cartman had insisted, and though Craig knew those words meant absolutely nothing positive when considering their history, he was feeling particularly moody and impulsive that afternoon, and something as idiotic as falsifying an entire church for cash definitely fulfilled the primal teenaged urge to do something reckless. Most kids scribbled on walls or did drugs to rebel. South Park kids started wars and Ponzi schemes.

Every couple of weeks or so Eric Cartman would make them gather ‘round in the atrium of the church to discuss any changes to the routine and make sure everything was in working order. It meant inspecting the fog machines and the motorized furniture, which was the best part, and listening to Cartman gripe about having lost a negligible fraction of money in the past week, which was the worst part. Any moment now and it’d be Craig’s turn to get yelled at. Wonderful.

“Craig, I’m thinking your routine is getting a little stale,” he sneered, a hand to his chin in what he probably thought looked scheming when it just looked stupid, and Craig shrugged at him. “Maybe we should amp up the bullshit, you know, make it cheesier.”

Craig snorted. “How do you get cheesier than, ‘open your heart to salvation!’?” He imitated the bad kind-of Southern accent he usually did with the opening line of his act, and Cartman scrunched up his face in an ugly frown.

“I don’t know, asshole, just play it up! Get more fog machines, fuck! Your job is to be convincing.” He was scowling, which was always a terrible expression on him, which made the whole conversation suddenly amusing.

“We both know I’m a terrible actor,” he countered. He crossed his arms and hoped Cartman’s face would start turning purple.

“You’ve been doing this for over a year and you’ve gotten much better than when you started. Figure it out,” Cartman insisted, an accusatory finger jabbed in his direction. Craig flipped him off and sighed as he leaned forward into his notebook. There wasn’t much more to the meeting, and he wanted to finish his sketch of a dragon. It was pretty messed up, and he was probably going to take a picture of it to post on twitter. He had the handle baddragons and he used it to post pictures of poorly drawn dragon sketches on the corners of his papers. He got a lot of angry DMs looking for the dildos of a common name. He thought it was a pretty good joke.

Cartman wrapped up the meeting five minutes later, and dictated that Craig check all the door locks this time before leaving. The building was a dump, but it was the foundation on which they’d built their lies, and they needed a church for people to come to if they wanted to continue making incredible amounts of money. This month was funded by donations to a non-existent homeless shelter for kids with cancer, and it was astounding that none of the churchgoers bothered to look up the organization they claimed was real and just dumped their cash in the collection buckets. Tithe had been taken to a whole new level, and it was as ugly and stupid as the dragons on his troll twitter account.

 

* * *

 

The church sometimes felt creepy at night, and that was especially true when no one else was there with him. His colleagues had escaped as soon as Cartman had ended his spiel about the importance of proper fog machine use (to embellish the mysterious effect they were looking for). Craig was supposed to be removing the evil spirits from the souls of their planted audience members. Obviously, this meant there had to be smoke coming from the walls. The regulars ate the shit up, and it was frankly embarrassing that they’d refused to catch on. Humanity was such a waste.

He was halfway through blowing out all the over-the-top candelabras at the altar when a creaking sound squeaked underneath his feet. Craig shuffled his weight between legs to try to trigger it again, but he felt nothing out of the ordinary in the flooring that could have caused the squeaking in the first place, and he shrugged and moved on.

A few moments later the floor did it again, and this time Craig turned around to look for a source of the sound. The church was so dimly lit he could hardly see a thing, but what he could see looked normal. He was about to turn around and return to his candle-snuffing when the floor did it again, but this time louder, and it sounded more like a groan than a creak.

Craig tensed. He refused to die in some fucked up church when he didn’t even believe in God in the first place. Absolutely not. He carefully shifted the candle extinguisher to brandish it like a baton should he need to strike a threat. He waited.

A rush of hot air flew through the building and put out the remaining candles one by one, and at the same time, the ground below him began to shake. Craig bent his knees in a defensive stance to keep his balance. From the floorboards came what started as a groan and turned into a wail, which turned into screaming that made his ears feel like they were bleeding and felt like claws gouging at the flesh of them at the same time. In his surprise, he dropped the extinguisher, and brought both palms up to his ears to try to drown out the cries. It sounded like thousands of horrified voices moments before death, and even though Craig couldn’t care less about that part, it must have had some sort of magic to it because his eyes welled up with tears that he couldn’t control or understand.

From the place in the floor that the screaming exploded grew a light, warm and orange which turned to a blinding yellow the louder the voices cried. His hands weren’t helping, and he was resisting the urge to scratch at his ears in an attempt to stop the horrid sounds. The light and sound disappeared for one blissful second where Craig thought it might be over, but as soon as the silence in the air began to ring, an explosion burst from the floorboards in the center of the aisle.

Craig choked on a gasp and hacked as he backed away as quickly as he could without falling. His back pressed against his podium, and he watched as the cheap wooden floor panels splintered and broke apart to leave room for a hole split right through the earth that glowed an angry red-orange, like the flames of a fire. Never in all his life had he ever felt so compelled to talk to God.

He was about to start awkwardly reciting lines he’d learned in his pseudo-studies when out of the hole popped a ragged, fiercely clawed hand, which spread its pointed tips to dig itself into the wood. Craig shrieked, and any semblance of confidence or security fled from him at such a supernatural sight. The hand braced itself, and it pushed down with all its might to make the slab of wood collapse under its weight and heave to the surface a body curled inward.

Craig covered his mouth to prevent his panicked gasping for air from making sounds. In front of him, in front of the hole that undoubtedly led to Hell (which Craig had not believed in until personally witnessing its existence just now), was what looked like a boy.

At first glance he seemed normal, but from his back spread two huge crimson wings, leathery like a bat’s, and Craig spotted two matching horns sprouting from within messy golden locks of hair. The wings grew larger as they unfolded, and soon they were easily surpassing the width of the aisle, splayed fully out. Behind him a tail like a rat’s swung back and forth like a dog’s, a telltale spade at the end of it twitching. “A demon,” Craig whispered, and he yelped when the creature’s head shot up to meet his gaze with piercing cat’s eye pupils in fiery yellow irises.

“An imp, actually,” he said, and with each flap of his lips Craig saw canines sharp as daggers lining his gums. He gulped, his throat suddenly feeling dry as a desert, and the demon boy tilted his head slowly, carefully.

“You’re not like the others,” he said, and it took a few moments for Craig to compose himself before he realized the boy was staring at him, waiting for an explanation.

“I’m not really a pastor!” Craig held his hands up in the air as though it might help prove his innocence. His gut twisted and he fought the urge to vomit with all his being. The ground was still screaming, and he was finding himself drawn to staring at it instead of the demon in front of him.

“Oh yeah, s-sorry about that, hang on,” the boy said, and with a snap, the hole was gone and the screeches were completely silenced. Craig looked up into his intense eyes again and found that even with the gate to hell closed, there was still a sound that surrounded him, almost like a low chanting or hum that represented his raw energy. He stood up straight, and that was when Craig realized that the second half of his body was not human, but furry and cloven hooved. Dear God.

He tilted his head again, and leaned on the pitchfork Craig hadn’t noticed he had. “You say you’re not a servant to the Lord?”

“I-I honestly don’t even know what that means,” Craig said quickly. “I don’t even believe! Well, okay, now I might, but. Before that, no. I do this for money!”

The demon nodded. “I knew that much, and that’s why I came here to drag you to Hell. I don’t know, though…” He trailed off, and raised a clawed finger to press it to his lower lip in thought. “Y-you’re pretty cute, nnh, for a human.” He twitched to the left and frowned.

Craig stuttered, lost for words or what to say really, but when he did finally speak, it was not at all what he wanted to say. “You too!” he exclaimed, and he covered his mouth immediately afterwards as though it could rescind his statement. What an embarrassment.

The demon boy chuckled. The sound was melodic and shook with the humming of his energy so that it reverberated in the church’s echoey chambers, and it was beautiful. Craig wasn’t sure if he was supposed to find it beautiful. Demons were supposed to be the worst, after all, according to his made-up scripture. Craig was supposed to be banishing demons. This one seemed pretty okay, though, and even though Craig was shaking so badly he felt like he might fall apart at the seams, he wasn’t all that threatening. That is, if he could get past the teeth and claws and wings, and horns, and hooves. He was particularly fixated on the cherry-red appendages sticking out of his back.

“Y-you like them?” the demon asked, and he made one flapping motion with his wings for good measure. The wind of it brushed Craig’s hair back and nearly ripped his hat clean off. Luckily he was still crouched against his podium, or else he probably would have stumbled from the wind force.

“Who are you?” Craig finally asked. The demon’s head tilted even further to the side in a way that made Craig think it must hurt his neck, but he seemed content.

“I’m not supposed to tell you,” he started, “but I like you, so I’m Tweek.” He smiled, and it would have been sweet if he didn’t have terrifyingly sharp fangs taunting him behind his lips. The demon boy named Tweek _was_ pretty, Craig would admit, with high cheekbones and elongated features that made him look lanky but somehow beautiful, like a dancer. His eyes were proving just as incredibly sharp as the first time he met them, and they danced on their own with their own fires. He was fascinating to look at, and Craig was mesmerized. The way Tweek giggled made Craig think he’d been caught staring.

“So...yeah. Hell, I guess. You really shouldn’t do this, y-you know,” Tweek lectured, gesturing at the church. “The only reason I can come in here is that your church is so illegitimate, you have no protective worship energy surrounding it. None of you believe at all. I-isn’t that sad, t-to just, not believe in something?” He frowned slightly. “It seems lonely. If I was allowed to like God, I probably would. He seems nice.”

Craig shook his head. “Okay, I’m sorry, but I have no idea what’s happening. Am I dreaming? What the fuck did I take?” he asked, and Tweek laughed at him again.

“You didn’t take anything. You just fucked up and I’m here to make you pay.”

“Oh, good,” Craig mumbled. “I always wanted to become a martyr.”

“I don’t think this counts as martyrdom. You’re not even religious. You’re just a shitty person.” Tweek looked surprised, his cat eyes blinking slowly. “You don’t want to make your case before I toss you in, then?” Tweek stepped forward, his wings rising to glide over the pews. The closer he got, the grander they became, until Craig was so enamored with them that he wanted to reach out and pet just one finger on the skin that webbed Tweek’s wings together.

“I don't really have a case. I know this is wrong.” Craig shrugged. He was starting to feel more comfortable, and his shaking had been reduced to adrenaline-fueled tremors. Now that he looked closer, Tweek seemed to be shaking slightly too. “Are you afraid of me too?” he asked, but he instantly regretted it the moment Tweek snorted at him.

“N-no,” he smirked, “I just shake. God made me wrong so Satan took me instead. He’s very, ngh,” Tweek twitched violently mid-sentence, “nice! You'd like him, I think. Most do. Let's go!” Tweek snapped and the hole in the ground reappeared, squealing at full-force.

“You want me to get in _that?”_ Craig yelled over the cries, and Tweek gave him a confused look.

“W-well, you don't really have a choice.”

“No?” Craig asked, and Tweek shook his head. Craig rubbed his hands together and did what he did best: scam his way through a tight spot. “You're a devil, right?” Tweek nodded slowly. “Wouldn't the more devilish thing to do be to… I dunno, defy your orders and steal me away for yourself?” Craig crossed his fingers behind his back.

Tweek’s eyes practically glowed. “Wow, would you really let me do that?” Craig nodded, very subtly as he was still very uncertain, but he did. “That sounds fun!” He shrieked and the high pitch of his voice rattled the windows and pierced Craig’s brain like an instant migraine. “O-oh, sorry. I forget you're so fragile.” He looked sheepish, which was not a description Craig thought he would ever give a demon. Then again, Craig hadn't believed in demons until one quite literally showed up in front of him.

“You still have to get in, though,” Tweek said, frowning. “I can fly but I don't want to fly out of here in such a small town. Satan doesn't like when we’re spotted. I want to teleport a little ways out. Is that okay?”

“No,” Craig said, his stomach flipping again at the sight of the flames beneath the floorboards. “But I guess I have no choice.”

“Nope!” Tweek said cheerfully, and Craig sighed.

“Okay,” he said, feeling as though he'd either horribly regret or fondly recall his decision, “take me away, demon boy.”

“I'm an imp,” Tweek corrected, but Craig rolled his eyes.

“Whatever, imp boy. Let's go.”

His stomach erupted into butterflies at the excited gleam in Tweek’s eyes as he held out a clawed hand for him to take. Craig slowly placed his palm in his, and the pad of his hand was surprisingly soft to the touch. It was warm, but not clammy, and Craig relaxed into his hold as he was tugged gently forward. “I can't believe I'm doing this,” he muttered, but Tweek gave him a reassuring smile that was much gentler without the deadly fangs poking out of his lips.

“I won't hurt you,” Tweek said, and somehow, for some idiotic reason, Craig believed him. For a moment he recalled his family, his friends, and his coworkers who would find his notebook discarded and the floors ripped to shreds without any idea of what had transpired, but something about the imp holding his hand made him less worried about the life he was likely abandoning for a long time.

Tweek led him forward and he gulped, staring down into the flames that screamed. “They won't burn you,” Tweek said, “they’re just warm.” Craig still feared them. After a moment to collect himself, he nodded, giving Tweek permission to lead him in.

“So, are you familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah?” Tweek asked, grinning, and Craig choked on his spit before he was pulled forward and began a free-fall through a wormhole leading to God knew where.

When they resurfaced it was in a dark shack in a town Craig didn't recognize, and Tweek had the same grin in place as when they hopped through the portal the first time, and Craig had to wonder just how familiar he was with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and how much it was going to relate to the hours of sex they would undoubtedly be having in the very near, very enticing future.


End file.
